Last week, Democracy Now! and The Guardian ran our story about Goldman Sachs
yanking financial support from a community credit union for honoring
one of its largest customers. The customer: Occupy Wall Street.

Our report so enraged Goldman that, within days, it doubled down on its attack on the little community bank.

Goldman had already demanded the return of its $5,000 payment to the
Lower East Side Peoples Federal Credit Union. Now, sources say,
the trillion-dollar Wall Street mega-bank sent the following message to
the not-for-profit community bank: "You will never get a dime from
any bank ever again."

About those "dimes" Goldman is taking away: They
come from you and me, the taxpayers who put up billions into
the Troubled Asset Recovery Plan (TARP), usually known as the Bank
Bail-Out Fund.

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For Goldman to suck its $10 billion from the TARP trough, Goldman had
to change from investment bank to commercial bank. This change makes
Goldman subject to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and requires it
by law to pay back a notable portion in funds for low-income
communities, abandoned by the big banks.

In other words, Goldman is beating up Lower East Side Peoples (which
operates in Harlem and the Latino New York neighborhood known
as Loisaida).

I would note that Goldman's nasty threat to cut off funding for
Peoples, the credit union that is officially chartered as the bank for
low income New Yorkers, came with a complaint about this reporter.

Goldman claims that Greg Palast called only one time to get
Goldman's side of the story. (I called many times, as did my associate,
and we left the same repeated message: I want your side of the
story. Please call me and tell me if you're punishing the poor peoples'
bank because they are supporting the demands of Occupy Wall Street?)

There are tens of billions of dollars at stake in the Community
Reinvestment funds due from the big banks. As other banks are
making noises of heeding Goldman's call to whip the uppity little
credit union, an answer from Goldman becomes urgent.

So, Goldman, I'm still waiting for an answer. You've got my numbers, so just pick up a tentacle and call.

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Chapter 12 of Vultures' Picnic,
"The Generalissimo of Globalization," includes the Palast team
investigation of confidential documents of meetings over years between
Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and the CEOs of Goldman, Bank of
America and JP Morgan.

The investigation takes the Palast crew from a dictator's shopping
spree in Geneva to the Andes to Africa and back to Palast's years
within the circle of a troll-like character named Milton Friedman.

Greg Palast's investigative reports appear in Rolling Stone, the Guardian and on BBC Television. His latest film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, on how Donald Trump stole the 2016 election, is available on Amazon. Palast is Patron of the Trinity (more...)